On Impossibility, and the Lord's Name in Vain.

Pardon the lack of excuse, lovely reader. I shall not, in shedding from myself this coat which has grown itchy and heavy and entering this piece of thought which having worn like winter warmth in spring into this armoire, plague it's fur and buttons with the lice and moths which so often feast upon and by which I am meaning to say, fancy language. Pray, listen simply to my simple words:

It's true (the little one says, "ouai, c'est vrai." usually when lying but, of course, not always.) that you can't know what it feels like to be here. Maybe I should lay out what my schedule is like for you; the mundane rhythm and inner dialogue which serves as a kind of refuge from not knowing usually what is going on round me. [I resisted from typing, "Perhaps it would behoove me to..." and then I resisted from typing, "I oughtta..."]. I'm not going to do that, at least not just yet. [I resisted from typing, "I shan't"]. I have to address some things first.

First. I am reflecting on how vastly bizarre a combination of stuff [it took me at least 3 minutes to decide to write 'stuff'.]  I have surrounded myself with to absorb and make mine and make me. Like, okay, for instance, the French language as spoken mostly by a 3 and 7 year old. Granted, I do speak with the adults, and I'm hoping to seek out more conversational outlets, but as of late the kids are my greatest exposure and interaction with the language in real time. And then, okay, I've got Sartre, George Sand, and Guy de Maupassant (among others) in their original French as well as Virginia Woolf, and Isak Dinisen in translated French and selected essays of Montaigne translated into English, and a very particular sort of English, mind you- an elevated tone, older style (if that's the right word). I watch French reality cooking tv shows with my host (Le Meilleure Patisser). These are the stuffs that are seeping into me; these are the influences I've chosen (to say nothing of the food).

Now, as I said, I'm no stranger to the truth that you can't really, really, know what it feels like to be here. I'm going to share with you a bit from Montaigne that just really chimed with my bones. And goddammit, it made me smile:

"As we see some idle fallow grounds, if they be fat and fertile, to bring forth store and sundry roots of wild and unprofitable weeds, and that to keep them in use we must subject and employ them with certain seeds for our use and service. And as we see some women, though single and alone, often to bring forth lumps of shapeless flesh, whereas to produce a perfect and natural generation they must be manured with another kind of seed. So is it of minds, which except they be busied about some subject that may bridle and keep them under, they will here and there wildly scatter themselves through the vast field of imaginations.

As trembling light reflected from the Sun,
Or radiant Moon on water-filled brass lavers,
Flies over all, in air upraised soon,
Strikes house-top beams, betwixt both strangely wavers.
-Virg. AEn. viii. 22.

 And there is no folly, or extravagant raving, they produce not in that agitation.

Like sick men's dreams, that feign
Imaginations vain.
-Hor. Art. Poet. vii.

 The mind that hath no fixed bound will easily lose itself. For as we say, To be everywhere is to be nowhere.

Good sir, he that dwells everywhere,
Nowhere can say that he dwells there.
-Mart. vii. Epig. 1xxii. 6.

It is not long since I retired myself unto mine own house with full purpose (as much as lay in me) not to trouble myself with any business, but solitarily and quietly to wear out the remainder of my well-nigh-spent life; where methought I could do my spirit no greater favor than to give him the full scope of idleness, and entertain him as he best pleased, and withal, to settle himself as he best liked; which I hoped he might now, being by time become more settled and ripe, accomplish very easily; but I find:

Evermore idleness,
Doth wavering minds address.
-Lucan iv. 704.

 That contrariwise playing the skittish and loose-broken jade, he takes a hundred times more career and liberty unto himself than he did for others; and begets in me so many extravagant Chimeras and fantastical monsters, so orderless and without any reason, one huddling upon another, that at leisure to view the foolishness and monstrous strangeness of them, I have begun to keep a register of them, hoping, if I live, one day to make him ashamed and blush at himself."
-from Of Idleness [Chapter VIII The First Book of Essais by Montaigne] translated into the English by John Florio in 1603.
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So when I looked back at an email I sent to a friend about a month ago in full Jersey-Girl English goddammit, something stirs in me which hasn't been touched since I've been here, which is why in this post I am nodding to it, only to recognize it and make it remember that it's not been forgotten. I am hearing such different things in every ear that I have, and so many things speaking at changing volumes within me, that not only is it impossible for you to know what it feels like to be here, it is also really hard, though not impossible, even to write it and then that much more challenging to make sense of it. Montaigne wrote that about discovering idleness nearing the end of his life, but I am 22, and have chosen not total idleness or isolation, but certainly a vein of the both.

Friend, I want to tell you about the French accent, my imitation French accent, and the little girls' French accent in English when they try. I want to tell about reading, and eating, and moving my body, and I want to tell about watching the little girls learning to read, and sounding out French. I want to tell you about poetry, and tale-telling, and the difference between playing "Simon Says," and "Jacque a Dit." I want to serenade you with expressos and butter and second-hand smoke. But for now, I'll just confirm that even though the language is different, kids are the same tout le monde.

And anyway, this is my register for the wild scatterings of my mind in the vast field of imagination. I hope one day it will make me blush. I think it shall.